Monday, June 29, 2009

Watching A Dallas Cop Car Chase During Lunch

I turned on the TV during lunch to check in on the news to see that the news on all the cable news channels was a car chase in my neighborhood of the world.

I've watched a few of these live police chases in the past. I remember one in the LA zone that ended sort of anti-climatically on a dirt road.

And then there was another Dallas one where the police had flattened the chasee's tires, but she kept on going. That one ended when the woman stopped on a freeway bridge over a lake in east Dallas. I remember thinking, where did she think she was running to? On a lake.

The chase I watched during lunch began with a routine cop stop that quickly spun out of control when narcotics were detected. One of the Dallas TV stations already had a copter in the air, heading to get video of a bunch of dead cows. The copter got diverted from the cows to the cops.

I've never seen one of these cop chases be so wild. The guy trying to escape careened off the freeway, throwing the cops momentarily off his trail. The bad guy zoomed through intersections, flipped U-Turns and finally came to a stoplight where he got past the stopped cars and then was hit on the driver's side by a fast moving truck.The driver of the truck was not badly injured. His truck was though. The bad guy's car was smacked pretty bad, sort of bent out of shape. The cops had trouble getting inside the car, ended up breaking windows to get the doors open. After about 5 minutes emergency crews arrived and were setting up to help the bad guy when Shepard Smith and FOX News went to commercial.

I decided I'd seen enough and turned off the TV.

Update: As you can see in the photo, the suspect's car was heavily damaged in the crash. Authorities have yet to disclose the suspect's condition. He was brought to an area hospital. I don't know why news reports refer to the driver as a suspect. Is there any doubt he led a large number of police on a dangerous chase?

Update 2: The driver is in critical condition at Baylor University Medical Center. More Details Here.

5 comments:

Well, Anonymous, like I said, Shepard Smith went to commercial and I turned the TV off. I assumed the bad guy was alive because before I turned off the TV it appeared that the medic team was setting up to treat the perp once they got him out of the car. I figured the person was likely all bloody. I knew they would cut instantly away as soon as that was apparent. I figured I'd watched enough of the spectacle.

Considering the huge number of innocent drivers at risk of death and serious injury, the penalties are obviously not serious enough to deter these events.Hopefully the police pepper-sprayed and tasered him multiple times while he was trapped in the car.